Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself more and more frustrated with the political coverage presented in the NY Times. I can reluctantly tolerate Paul Krugman abandoning his great economic pieces to pursue less-than-apt political ones; I know that columnists will be columnists and the op/ed section of any newspaper is going to be a bit more impassioned come election time. But when research and the reporting of events and quotations loses its objectivity, there is no longer worth to a publication.
One of the problems with calling the NY Times out on its poor reporting is that they change their stories after they’re published, and so it is often difficult to find good examples in hindsight. I’m not referring to a dangling modifier or a mis-spelled last name; I’m referring to the subtraction of an incorrect fact or the addition of a relevant quote that puts things into a different perspective altogether.
Thanks to a few tips from e-cquaintances, I’ve caught them red-handed this time with two different versions of the same article. Here’s version 1. Here’s version 2. I’m putting them up for download below because I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before they take the first one down.
Download version 1 in PDF format.
Download version 2 in PDF format.
The Headline
The most obvious distinction between the two versions comes in their respective headlines. The original headline (”Few From Obama’s Youth Remember His Drug Use”) implies the possibility that Obama lied in claiming to have used drugs. That’s not me reading between the lines; Serge F. Kovaleski, the writer, raises this possibility directly:
…or he added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.
The second headline (”Old Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life”) holds a completely different implication. The claim is no longer that “few” people remember Obama’s drug use, but that his drug use only played a “bit part” in his life. Mr. Kovaleski now is backhandedly acknowledging the truthfulness of the drug use claim while at the same time seeking to minimize it. The tone remains dark and accusatory, as if this contradicts Obama’s claims. But if you go back and read Dreams from My Father, you’ll see that only a page and half is devoted to his drug use; never did he imply being anything more than an occasional user.
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